Interest

Watch 100 Years of Anime Flash By in Just 15 Minutes

This year marked anime's centennial anniversary — 100 years of animation from Japan to delight and charm fans. It's hard to imagine that shadow puppet animation and stop-motion recreations of Japan meeting the West would lead to the community we have today, full of dazzling dancing idols, vampire slayers, and high fantasy epics.

The Association of Japanese Animations (AJA) celebrated anime's anniversary this year with a film festival and special theme song. The organization put together a retrospective video recounting anime's earliest days to its current hits. The video includes the theme song "Tsubasa wo Motsu Mono ~Not an angel Just a dreamer~" (Those With Wings: Not an Angel, Just a Dreamer) by 23 musical acts, some include i☆Ris, Azumi Inoue, the Wake Up, Girls! singing group, Maaya Uchida, Akira Kushida, GRANRODEO, Isao Sasaki, Hiro Shimono, JAM Project, Konomi Suzuki, Kenichi Suzumura, Ayana Taketatsu, Minori Chihara, TRUE, Toshiyuki Toyonaga, Shōko Nakagawa, Wataru Hatano, Mitsuko Horie, Minami, Ichirō Mizuki, Suzuko Mimori, May'n, and Chihiro Yonekura.

Travel through time in this 15 minute video to see where fandom all started and how much it has changed in 100 years.

Fans will be quick to notice that Studio Ghibli works are missing from the video entirely. Not sure why that might be other than possible licensing usage reasons.

AJA will close out the year with a special New Year's Eve program on NHK. The five-hour show will focus on voice actors with a look back on how the industry has changed in the last 100 years and reveal the result of the most popular anime character poll.

Does your favorite anime make an appearance in the music video? Were you surprised by the inclusion of stop-motion animation throughout the video? What other anime was omitted that you think should be in the video? Let us know in the forums.

Source: MoCa News